Former National Service Authority officials, vendors face prosecution

The Office of the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice will prosecute 12 former directors and staff of the National Service Authority (NSA) in the coming days for allegedly siphoning over GH¢548 million through the inflation of budgets and creating ghost names on the payroll of the National Service Scheme (NSS).

Addressing a news conference on the status of the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) in Accra yesterday, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, alleged that the top officials and staff of the NSA exploited nine vendors to misappropriate state funds for their personal gain.

As a result, the nine vendors on the authority’s Central Market System (CMS) marketplace, a platform to facilitate various services and transactions for national service personnel (NSP), including cashless payment options, will also face trial for their alleged roles in what the A-G described as a criminal enterprise covering a six-year period from 2018 to 2024.

The A-G said the vendors received funds from the authority meant for the supply of items and loans to the NSPs but could not provide evidence to prove that the monies received were used for that purpose.

The suspects are expected to be arraigned at the High Court in Accra on charges of stealing, conspiracy to steal, willfully causing financial loss to the state, using public office for profit, obtaining public property by false statements, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering.

Suspects

The top officials alleged to be involved in the scandal are two former Executive Directors of the NSA, Mustapha Ussif and Osei Assibey Antwi; a former deputy Executive Director, Gifty Oware-Mensah; a former deputy Executive Director of Operations, Kweku Ohene Gyan; Head of Deployment, Abraham Bismark Gaisie, and a former head of accounts, Eric Nyarko.

The others suspected to be involved in the deals are a former Internal Auditor, Albert Oteng Owusu; an accounts officer, Kweku Dekyi Agyei; a former head of accounts, Iddrisu Ibn Abu-Bakr; the Koforidua Municipal Director, Stephen Kwabena Gyamfi; a District Director, Prince Agbofa Awuku, and a Management Information Systems Administrator in the Northern Regional Office, Jacob Yawson.

The vendors to be charged are the owner of Stalwart/Option Buy Ventures, Isaac Osae Asamani; the owner of CH OHEC Ventures, Charles Ohemeng; the owner of Brainwave Ventures, Philomina Arthur; owner of Marine Ventures, Rose Hamilton; owner of Franlisa Ventures, Kwaku Opare Agbofa; the owner of Alfarita Ventures, Solomon Dwamena; owner of Alfayda Enterpirse, Haruna Mawulaya; the owner of Sylsona Ventures, Sylvia Ntriwa Opare, and Peter Mensah, who is the husband of Ms Oware-Mensah.

Dr Ayine explained that his office had made a decision to enter into non-prosecution agreements with those who had agreed to provide compelling testimonies as witnesses for the prosecution, adding, “In this regard, we have agreed not to disclose their names in this press briefing”.

In the case of Ms Oware-Mensah, Dr Ayine alleged that she used NSP allowances as security to secure a GH¢30.69 million loan from the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) at an interest rate of 23 per cent.

That, the A-G said, was achieved by using other people’s information to register a company called Blocks of Life Consult without their knowledge or permission.

Within two service years (2022-2023 and 2023- 2024), the A-G said, suspect Oware-Mensah used 9,934 ghost names to misappropriate the funds.

“Investigation further established that after ADB transferred the funds into the account of the company, she subsequently transferred the funds into four different company accounts, some of which she was a Director of”.

“Between 3rd March, 2023 and 24th May, 2024, suspect Gifty transferred GH¢22.925 million to AMAECOM, GH¢1 million to Scafold, GH¢1.57 million to OTCHEY, and GH¢5.2 million to Aristo Logistics and Trading,” the A-G said.

Modus

Explaining their modus operandi, Dr Ayine said the directors inflated the authority’s budget from the Minister of Finance, requesting permission to utilise excess funds allocated in the budget of the NSA before submitting to Parliament for approval a budget figure representing the number of prospective service personnel for that service year.

Once authorised, he alleged that the directors would transfer the funds into the NSA’s project account at the ADB and under the pretext of executing their projects, would divert the funds into private pockets.

He added that another criminal scheme hatched and exploited by the directors and staff was the deployment of ghost names on to the NSA system, adding, “Once deployed, the directors would then request that both ghost names and genuine names be transmitted by the Head of Accounts to the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS) for payments, which included payments to E-Zwich cards procured for the fictitious national service personnel.

“Our investigations compared monthly data of verified national service personnel generated from the central management system and submitted to the NSA accounts office and the data of NSA personnel who were actually paid through the GHIPSS system for six years,” he said.

The A-G stated that investigations established that 587,543 personnel were to be submitted to GHIPSS for payment of allowances but data from GHIPSS showed that 650,165 personnel were paid, indicating that 63,672 constituted ghost names from categories such as personnel who were blocked on the CMS during the registration process, those whose numbers existed in the payment records but do not exist on the CMS, among others.

Dr Ayine said the investigations further established that some of the ghost names were added to the lists submitted by the vendors, representing the number of service personnel to whom they had supplied items or provided loan facilities.

“When these vendors eventually received payments, the directors and staff would then contact the vendors whose accounts had received payments, meet with them and collect the additional money that had been added to the vendors’ payments,” he said.

ORAL

The ORAL Committee was a preparatory team set up by President John Dramani Mahama on December 18, last year, with the mandate to gather information on suspected acts of corruption from the public and other sources.

To facilitate this, a toll-free contact number, website and email were launched just two days later to receive whistleblower tip-offs and voluntary tendering which received many responses, including 924 emails, 44 petitions and 1,483 calls in less than two months.

Prior to the launch of ORAL, the team which was led by the Member of Parliament for North-Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, reviewed 59 cases, which included 36 financial cases valued at a staggering $20.49 billion, as well as state lands taken over by private entities estimated at $702.8 million.

In February, this year, President Mahama, who received the report directed Dr Ayine to initiate investigations immediately into the corruption cases uncovered by the committee with a view to prosecuting anyone found liable for corruption or corruption-related offences.